


Life is a Bang(ed up Train Wreck)

by ChiaRoseKuro



Series: The Second Dawn [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Akatsuki are alive and doing a Thing, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Gen, Implied Relationships, Inappropriate Use of the Edo Tensei, Inappropriate Use of the Sharingan, Not Canon Compliant, Not Naruto Epilogue Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 19:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13642605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChiaRoseKuro/pseuds/ChiaRoseKuro
Summary: “Baby Uchiha,” Deidara says in between all the horrific ringing in Sasuke’s ears, “you’re gonnaregretdoing that, yeah.”(On the way home, a little girl compliments him on the pretty pink bows in his hair and how his eyes have the most flattering eyeshadow she’s ever seen in her life. He gets called abeautiful big sister. If he wasn’t so busy suppressing tears over his waxed legs and plucked eyebrows, he would’ve shoved a Chidori into her chest and called it a day.Winning ‘Prettiest Kunoichi of the Month’ for that particular ensemble doesn’t help, either.)The Fourth Shinobi War is over, Sasuke has been pardoned and his life's ahead of him. The only thing he hadn't been banking on were eight revived criminals (or seven revived criminals and one reassembled one, if he's being picky) coming back to haunt him.Sometimes, being a reformed mass murdering psychopathsucked.(ft. Deidara and Ino's questionable friendship, Naruto trying his hand at sarcasm and Sasuke, eternally screaming into the distance)





	Life is a Bang(ed up Train Wreck)

**Author's Note:**

> What started off as a completely innocent 'Hey, have you ever realized Deidara looks _a lot_ like Ino?' turned into 'Gee I wonder what they'd be like in Konoha' and... this got spat out. Apparently, one text saying 'I'd love to read this' is a good enough reason to waste the day away banging out nonsense. Thanks, Cindy.
> 
> Someone out there's probably written a thing for Deidara and Ino terrorizing Konoha with their pretty looks and pretty tempers but here's my interpretation of it anyway. Maybe I'll add to it, maybe I won't. Either way, if you're looking for canon complicity and someone who doesn't fuck around with dojutsus and actually cares about the timeline, don't read this fic.
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy! And let's pretend I'll stop worrying over this idea and go back to my other ongoing works... haha...

The Fourth Shinobi War is over, all of humanity has been saved from Madara’s evil schemes and Kaguya’s attempts to hijack them for _her_ evil schemes, and by all rights everything should be okay. Given that Sasuke’s goals for revenge have been quite handily fulfilled, first when he’d killed Itachi and then when he partially razed Konoha to the ground, there’s really nothing to do but… go home? Let the dead last idiot and his obsessive fangirl fawn over him again? Have everyone pity him for being the last Uchiha but hate his guts because he’ll never be theirs, except with a tinge of terror because he’d very nearly damned them all with his own evil scheme?

Whatever it was, Sasuke had been content to let everything resolve itself after the whole ‘save the ungrateful shinobi world, ungratefully’ gig. After all, he hadn’t really banked on Naruto blowing off his arm and dousing his hatred instead of lying down like a good boy and giving up his tailed beast.

So returning home with his newly resurrected brother in tow was… well. It was a surprise like being jumped in the streets and having your guts ripped out by an axe-wielding murderer was a surprise.

In other words, what in the ever living fuck?

But despite being very obviously dead, because Itachi’s eyeballs were quite clearly transplanted into his head and his soul had most definitely floated away to the Pure Land after that very confusing head-bump, here he is. Here the clan-killing bastard is, smiling at the ruins of Konoha with the sort of quiet cheer he had as a kid, before he’d started the whole forehead-poking trend, and commenting on how the village’s changed, _isn’t that strange, did someone attack the village while I was gone?_

Sasuke still doesn’t know if he wanted to rip Itachi’s heart out and force-feed it to his corpse or stuff him into a cotton-lined box so he’d never be hurt again. Given that he’d dealt with this feeling for just about as long as he could remember, though, he thought it could keep.

The whole undead thing? Now _that_ couldn’t keep.

He thinks he gets how it happened, even if he doesn’t really _get_ it in every single sense. There was something about his Rinnegan mixing with Kaguya’s last vestiges of power and the whole Indra-Asura mess tying improbable strands of ninjutsu whatever—he just lost an arm and got force-fed Naruto’s forgiveness, it wasn’t like listening was a fucking _priority_ at that stage—but the point _was_ that there were dead people who were very clearly not dead.

Apparently, it was too much trouble for Sasuke to not fuck everything up and just… hare off. Like all the way on the other side of the continent, where nobody would know he was the last of a crazy-eyed clan that went about gaining great power by killing everyone they loved and enslaving people for some nebulous ‘greater good’.

Itachi did it and it worked for a time. Sasuke thinks about that— _broods_ , the dead last would call it, but he’s named after a ramen condiment so nothing he says is ever true—as he drags his feet and scowls at people doing double takes whenever they see him. Or his brother, either’s a good bet.

Or maybe it’s the trail of Akatsuki dogging his footsteps.

_Should’ve just destroyed the world like I’d planned to,_ Sasuke thinks—because he’s _definitely_ not sulking, that’s unbecoming of someone who almost took over the world for its own good—and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

Anything to keep him from strangling the idiots that’re suddenly his responsibility.  
 

* * *

  
The thing about Akatsuki is that they didn’t start off as a mass-murdering bunch of crazies being manipulated by the craziest of them all, which is saying something when their members range from a can of flesh tucked into a puppet to an undead priest with a malfunctioning brain-to-mouth filter to a sentient plant housing two personalities. At the end of the day, Akatsuki had been an organization founded on the principles of peace, upheld by people who had absolutely no regard for the sanctity of life or any of its other tenets, and its members were all missing-nin. Specifically, crazy mass-murdering missing-nin.

Itachi’s reason for returning to Konoha is simple enough: he had always been loyal to the village, despite being partially responsible for killing one of its nominal heads and eradicating one of its most prominent clans, and his baby brother was there. Kisame’s are also fairly simple: for all that he’d been one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Hidden Mist, he was also Itachi’s partner and secretly wanted to see the ever-stoic bastard stop mothering over him, for a change. Even Nagato’s is acceptable, if vague ramblings about repaying his debts and keeping an eye on his eye and serving his nominal clan head are anything to go by.

The rest… are not so straightforward. Hidan’s, especially, make absolutely no sense, unless one also worshipped Jashin and ignored the improbability of some dumb idiot actually rescuing him from the Nara clan’s forest. Life, Sasuke muses, is strange like that.

And honestly, the whole thing’s stupid. Everyone except Itachi belongs to another village, everyone _including_ Itachi has absolutely no reason to return—and everyone, _especially_ Itachi, had no fucking _right_ to appeal for clemency then have it granted to them because Naruto’s a big fucking bleeding heart with less common sense than an acorn. Why Sasuke didn’t kill the blithering idiot still escapes him.

He’ll conveniently forget that the clemency also extends to him, which is why he’s allowed to be back on Uchiha clan lands without Konoha ninja landing on him like vultures to a carcass. It’ll be better for his sanity in the long run, Sasuke thinks, if he doesn’t notice Hidan and Deidara pulling each other’s hair and screaming about… something. Or Kakuzu eyeing one particularly decrepit building and muttering about money, most likely, and how he’s not going to contribute a single _dollar_ to reconstructing this mess. Or Konan folding tiny paper cranes and hanging them up by his family home.

Somehow, Sasuke gets the sneaking suspicion that _this_ is his unofficial punishment for almost killing Naruto, Sakura and everyone else he’s had the misfortune of almost killing. It’s a long list, okay?

But for now, he’ll content himself with blowing a Great Fireball in Hidan’s and Deidara’s direction, resolving to drain Kakuzu’s bank account dry and thanking Konan for something he’ll set alight when she’s not looking.

If it allows Sasuke to avoid Itachi and his pointed glances to the clan’s shrine? Then so be it.  
 

* * *

  
Unfortunately, life is not that simple and the Akatsuki do not just ‘settle in’. Maybe Sasuke’s being a little optimistic when he’s saddled with a bunch of mass-murdering crazies, but what else is he supposed to do? _Kill them all?_

Because that so very clearly worked the first time around for all the Konoha nin who tried.

Regardless, Konan’s actually done an impressive job of setting up an origami store and Itachi, bless his stupid peace-loving head, manages to wrangle himself a spot back in ANBU. Nagato is somehow the envy of every teenage girl who doesn’t think his skin-and-bones look is _incredibly concerning and life-threatening_ and Kakuzu’s elaborate pyramid schemes are paying off quite spectacularly. Hidan’s a firm favourite in T &I for no other reason than because his Jashinist rants are fucking _terrifying_ and Sasori’s puppets, whilst being lethal and entirely inappropriate for kids, are still a massive hit with the Academy squirts. Kisame’s sushi store is flourishing, despite the occasional deaths whenever Samehada gets restless and chomps up a shinobi by accident, Zetsu's provided a great source of learning for the medics when he's not busy with his plant store and Deidara…

Deidara blows up his art studio at least once a week and is, somehow, best friends with Ino.

Sasuke’s just surprised he didn’t see that last one coming.

Now, Sasuke’s got a very nebulous concept of ‘best friends’. Maybe categorizing Deidara and Ino as ‘best friends’ is wrong because they haven’t attempted to stick a hand through the other’s chest at any point in time. Maybe they’re not ‘best friends’ because one didn’t chase the other around the continent for a quarter of their life. All they do is have very, very strong opinions on art and fashion, drag people into their arguments and contribute to the rapid depletion of common sense, good tempers and, most importantly, _sane people in the village_.

Or just people in the village, it’s pretty debatable. Sasuke’s honestly not bothered by how very few people haven’t decided to up and migrate to the other side of the continent because _oh, how convenient, there aren’t crazily pretty—or pretty crazy, it’s debatable at this point in time—people jumping out to kill me under innocent pretexts_.

But the point stands: Deidara loves Ino like the younger sister she looks and sounds like, disregarding the fact that they have very different parents and lived in very different villages up until the end of the war, but he _cannot_ agree with her when it comes to their passions. Half the patients in hospital are there because of their very frequent ‘disagreements’, the other half are there because of the other Akatsuki members, and Sasuke’s sick of footing the bill for every single one of them.

Kakuzu doesn’t even contribute, rich bastard that he is.

And the worst thing? The worst thing is that Itachi just pats his head—like Sasuke’s some sort of sad, growly _mutt_ —and is the only person who’s breezed through Deidara’s and Ino’s ‘disagreements’ without his person or his pride suffering a grisly half-death. Even Naruto, the shinobi responsible for talking around just about every hard-boiled ninja in existence, always comes away with precisely half his bones broken and large swathes of his skin unaccounted for. If he’s lucky, he’ll be drowning in makeup and crying over skin infections because he didn’t clean it off properly, the idiot.

It’s patently unfair. Sasuke’s been stuffed into a skirt no less than _ten_ times and he’s pretty, sure, but not _that_ sort of pretty. He’s also very, very sure that waxing is some form of modern masochism. Men, he’s come to understand, are _not_ meant to be cold in certain vulnerable, once-hairy places.

So, clearly, it’s up to him to do something about it.  
 

* * *

  
“I was in the middle of something, yeah,” Deidara grouses, leaving footprints tracking over the tatami mats because he’s a barbarian who has never understood the need for shoes. For someone so fashion-conscious, he’s useless at anything to do with hygiene.

Because Sasuke does know what tact is, even if he’s chosen not to use it for most of his life—but mostly it’s counterproductive of him to go against The Plan—he only produces his patented response.

As always, it’s incredibly satisfying to see Deidara bristle at his “Hn.”

“Don’t fucking ‘hn’ me, yeah!” Flopping onto a pillow with a loud and incredibly exaggerated sigh, Deidara eyeballs Sasuke and loftily says, “ _But_ I guess I could forgive you. Not like there’s a lot in that warped little brain of yours, baby Uchiha.”

“ _Hn_ ,” Sasuke eloquently replies. Never let it be said that his maturity knew no bounds.

Sadly, The Plan does not actually involve riling Deidara until he blows himself up out of sheer irritation. Mourning the lost opportunity, because taking down Konoha is still a wistful dream and it’s not like there’s lots of people around to get hurt anyway, Sasuke lets his Mangekyo spin to life and catches Deidara’s eye, moments before he can open his mouth and go on a tirade.

Under normal circumstances, Deidara would either be subjected to Amaterasu or Tsukuyomi; it’s a bit of a toss-up because Sasuke hasn’t actually trained all that much with his Eternal Mangekyou. Either way, being burnt to a black crisp or having his mind broken would probably prevent him from getting into his stupid, pointless arguments with Ino. It’s a flawless plan, if he might say so himself.

Except Sasuke, being Sasuke, is too consumed by arrogance and petty hatred. Were he not, he might have remembered one particularly pertinent fact about Deidara.

Specifically, that Deidara’s left eye repels genjutsu.

The strange inverted world of Tsukuyomi is just beginning to manifest when the air in front of Sasuke explodes, flinging bits of clay across—and _into_ —his face. By the time he’s toppled onto his back, vision spinning in colours that aren’t red and black, Deidara’s leapt to his feet with a triumphant squawk and is glaring down at him with a very, _very_ nasty smirk.

“Baby Uchiha,” Deidara says in between all the horrific ringing in Sasuke’s ears, “you’re gonna _regret_ doing that, yeah.”

And without preamble, another explosive goes off in Sasuke’s face and all he knows is darkness.

(On the way home, a little girl compliments him on the pretty pink bows in his hair and how his eyes have the most flattering eyeshadow she’s ever seen in her life. He gets called a _beautiful big sister_. If he wasn’t so busy suppressing tears over his waxed legs and plucked eyebrows, he would’ve shoved a Chidori into her chest and called it a day.

Winning ‘Prettiest Kunoichi of the Month’ for that particular ensemble doesn’t help, either.)  
  


* * *

_  
So The Plan needs a little updating_ , Sasuke muses in between one bite of a perfect cherry tomato and the next. Tuning out Naruto’s cheerful babbling with the ease of the long-suffering, his eyes drift to the door as he grunts at the right moments, ensuring that Naruto doesn’t suspect a thing and so has no excuse to spray spittle in his face.

Ramen broth is bad enough; he doesn’t need Naruto’s spit too. There’s only a handful of circumstances when that’s even vaguely okay and… no. He’s in _public_ , let’s _not_.

Trying to cast a genjutsu on Ino is tantamount to suicide, no thanks to her clan’s specialty and half-memories of the times she’s used it while he was watching. Trying to cast a genjutsu on Deidara evidently doesn’t work either—Sasuke had tried to use Amaterasu on Itachi for that but he’d only batted his lashes and extinguished it with a faint half-smile, the bastard—so that’s out. No answer is ever the right answer in their debates, his fortune is looking less like a fortune and more like a pittance with how many people are in hospital and he’s sick and tired of it all.

“This needs to _stop_ ,” Sasuke growls into his salad, and it’s only when Naruto snaps his mouth shut and blinks dumbly at him that—oh. Right.

“No, I wasn’t talking about your…” Sasuke waves his hand as languidly as he can manage and Naruto, bless his possibly non-existent brain, nods and smiles like he completely understands.

“Yeah, I know,” Naruto sighs into his third—or possibly tenth, Sasuke’s not keeping count—bowl of ramen. “You’re about the only one who thinks I shouldn’t be Hokage, really, so I should just man up and take the spot. I’ll be way better than the old hag and our pervert teacher, believe it!”

Eyeing the fake brightness in Naruto’s smile—and since when did he have such deep eyebags?—Sasuke only makes a noncommittal grunt before asking, “If talking the evil out of someone doesn’t work and you can’t kill them, what else would you do?”

“Huh?” Naruto intelligently replies.

“I _said_ —”

“I heard you the first time, bastard!” Spluttering at Sasuke’s arched brow, which had yet to grow back from its traumatic encounter with a tweezer, Naruto rolls his eyes and says, “This hypothetical situation has absolutely nothing to do with you, right?”

It takes a lot longer than it should’ve for Sasuke to realize Naruto just used a five-syllable word which has nothing to do with ramen. By the time his mind’s completely blown and Naruto’s inhaled yet another bowl of the unhealthy MSG-laden stuff, he manages to reply with a, “Hn.”

What can he say, it’s the best multi-purpose expression.

Not that Naruto agrees when he mutters something into his newly-acquired chashu, but whatever. Sasuke’s fairly certain it was something along the lines of “Whatever keeps that stick up your arse, bastard,” but he’s launching into an enthusiastic—if not weirdly thoughtful—response so he leaves it for another day.

“Now,” Naruto says through a disgustingly full mouthful of ramen, “since ‘I’ have the social skills of a mossy rock—”

And Sasuke should be offended, he really should, but since when did Naruto have the mental capacity to pull off _sarcasm?_

“—‘I’ can’t go around making friends so that’s out of the question,” Naruto ploughs on, oblivious to Sasuke’s bewilderment. “What I _could_ do is do something… like… so, how’s Itachi doing in ANBU?”

“How would I know, I barely see him around,” Sasuke replies, “now answer my question.”

“Really?” Naruto asks. “So you haven’t heard about Kisame boning him—”

“ _What,_ ” Sasuke deadpans. A cherry tomato slides through his numb fingers and plops onto the ground, but he’s too busy staring in horror to register it.

“Hey, it’s true!” At Sasuke’s immediate blanching, Naruto shrugs a shoulder and adds, “At least three people I know saw Itachi limping with no visible injuries. Anyone who visited Kisame’s store weren’t even _eyed_ by Samehada for, what, a whole week? And Kisame was _singing_.”

Shaking his head and muttering about the universe gone wrong, Sasuke leaves the restaurant in a daze and only manages to snap out of it when he gets home and sees Itachi, sipping serenely from a cup of tea. Which isn’t weird in and of itself, except the rumour.

And the delicate cat ears superglued to his brother’s head.

By the time Sasuke’s locked himself in his room, he knows three things—one, brain bleach is not stocked anywhere in Konoha; two, pretending to be traumatized is actually an effective way of making Naruto pay for his meal; and three, his deep investment in Itachi is actually quite distracting.

Which, hmm. What would distract Ino and Deidara besides the obvious…?  
 

* * *

  
In retrospect, locking a very horny Hidan in a room with Deidara was not one of Sasuke’s finest moments— _especially_ when a very confused Sakura and Ino were thrown into the mix. In between the thumping Sakura gives him when she punches a hole through the room’s steel- and chakra-enforced walls and the grinding Hidan does against his leg, he has a long time to reflect on it.

This time, at least, they give him the right name when they name him the Prettiest Kunoichi of the Month. Sasuke hopes Naruto chokes on his lungs when he reads about it.

(And if Deidara and Ino’s _enthusiastic_ attention to his hair and clothes result in him smelling of smoke and sparkling whenever he steps outside for the next week, it’s not like Sasuke spent hours trying to scrub his skin or burn his hair off with a Great Fireball.

At least they agreed that glitter was in this season.)

**Author's Note:**

> ...It's 11:30pm and I've been writing intermittently for the past 12 hours. Please don't kill me.


End file.
